Korean companies are fined after investigation of loot boxes

After last year broke the controversy over the presence of loot boxes and some systems of microtransactions in video games, authorities from different countries paid attention to this type of practice to try to establish some regulation. On this occasion, a report revealed that 3 companies in South Korea were fined after authorities defined that they had cheated their users.According to a Dotesports report, the Korean companies Nexon, Netmarble and NextFloor were fined by the South Korean Fair Trade Commission after an investigation that revealed the use of deceptive practices to encourage user spending. The most important fine was for Nexon, a company penalized with $ 882,000 USD because it was determined that in a special event of its first-person multiplayer mobile game, Sudden Attack, tricked users into acquiring loot boxes. The deception was given, according to the Korean authority, in the community event "Celebrity Count", where Nexon established a dynamic in which users had to gather 16 pieces to put together a puzzle to receive special items. The pieces could be found in loot boxes, whose cost was $ 0.85 USD, but what Nexon did not reveal, was that the probability of obtaining one of the 16 pieces in a box was 0.5, which motivated users to spend average $ 13.60 USD, although a case was presented in which a user spent $ 432 USD.On the other hand, Netmarble and NextFloor were fined after it was considered that they also deceived the users of their games by offering ambiguous information regarding the probability of obtaining items in their loot boxes.Source